Dow rallies more than 300 points with dramatic buying spree at the closing bell

The U.S. stock market, which has lost more than $3 trillion in the last 15 days, ended the week with a dramatic late-day rally in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 331 points after tripping and falling more than 500 points earlier in the session.

The Dow gave traders a whipsaw day with a series of stomach-churning nosedives and precipitous spikes before bargain hunters moved in during the final two hours of trading and sent the market soaring into the closing bell.

The Dow closed up 1.38 percent to 23,190.

The other major indexes also traded up. The S&P 500 jumped 38 points to close at 2,641, and the Nasdaq vaulted 97 points to 6,874, up 1.44 percent from the previous day.

It was only the second day in the past six trading days that the Dow finished in the green. Friday's rally came a day after the Dow tumbled 1,032 points. The week started with the index sinking a record 1,175 points.

Overall, the Dow ended the week down 5 percent.

Since the Dow hit a record high of 26,616 on Jan. 26, the U.S. stock market has lost a whopping $3.1 trillion, Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist for JonesTrading, told ABC News.

The seesaw day on the market came after the Asian and European markets both closed in negative territory. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 508 points, or 2.32 percent, to 21,382, and China's Shanghai composite sank 4.02 percent to 3,130. The Pan-European STOXX 600 was off .70 percent and Britain's FTSE was down 34 points, or .49 percent.

The Dow and S&P 500, which also soared to a record high of 2,872 on Jan. 26, have both pulled back more than 10 percent in the past two weeks, thrusting the market into a full correction.

Fueling the topsy-turvy market have been indications of inflation on the horizon, including whether rising wages and an increase in the number of jobs added to the economy will prompt the U.S. Federal Reserve to accelerate a rise in interest rates.

"It's always encouraging when you end the week on an up note and you see buying into the close," Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab, told ABC News.

But Frederick said he was still jittery about the market, citing a key indicator of volatility. He said the CBOE Volatility Index, also known by its ticker symbol VIX, closed at 29.06, way above its long-term average of 19.5.

"I'm not convinced this is over yet," Frederick said of turbulence in the market. "We're still looking at some sizable movement in the market in the coming days."